


Style and Substance

by TwinConstellations



Category: Claymore
Genre: F/F, Reincarnation, it's so obvious that helen/noel/audrey and deneve/sophia/rachel are the same people, this made sense at five am, time is a flat circle and nothing is linear, various characters referenced - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:03:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinConstellations/pseuds/TwinConstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You've lived a thousand lives before this, together. You'll live a thousand more after this; you're living a thousand lives right now in other worlds. You know that you are linked, and have been throughout eternity.” - Liam O'Brien</p>
<p>Everything changes.</p>
<p>Everything stays the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Style and Substance

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything resembling fanfiction in about three years, so if this is rambly and nonsensical and frankly rather stupid, that's why. But Helen/Deneve owns my entire ass and I love the soulmate/reincarnation trope, so I took advantage of character archetypes.

Everything changes.

You’re born into a world that’s never cared about fair or right or innocent, or maybe no world ever does. You’re born poor, or maybe just not-rich, into a big family: sisters, brothers, in varying numbers of each, in a little village in the south, or was in the west? where you ran through the streets a hellion, a terror, a reckless energy-driven child without a care in the world until one day. One day.

One day when you come home to your brothers head on the doorstep and your mother’s blood across your bed and your father-no, your sister-no, your niece, just turned five-standing over your baby brother with blood dripping to the floor.

Once, you run.

Once, you sit so still in the shadows of the door that not even the villagers who come to take your family to their graves notice you.

Once, you pick a pan off of the table and creep slowly, slowly, forward until you can bring it down with all the strength in your small body onto the head of the thing that has left you an orphan.

Everything stays the same.

Always, always, there is a thing. There is blood dripping from its jaws and the body of your family at its feet and you, staring at the darkness in front of you as the world drops from beneath you.

Always, always, there is a man in black with a wicked smile and a wickeder knife and a thing that crawls beneath your skin and makes the world taste new.

Always, there is a girl: your childhood friend-no, a trainee in your group, one of four that survives-no, the warrior from two districts away, a suicidal, reckless idiot that makes you flash red with fury. There’s a woman older than you, proud, brave, unimaginably strong and serene and she smiles faintly as you fight against her-no, no, she nods once before disappearing in a burst of speed when you follow her into battle-no, she’s hidden, rarely seen, a secret weapon to be used against you should you forget your place.

And there’s a young girl. A girl with a power that terrifies you, that comes from love but has it no longer-that finds a family with those that once scorned her-that finds a mother and loses her and can’t even remember what was lost.

* * *

 

You’re soft, and fast, and unpredictable. A guiding blade, so fast it’s a blur, brushing aside attacks as though they’re the feathers you collect and hide in the inner lining of your cloak. They call you gentle, like you don’t eviscerate Awakened Beings before breakfast and tear down Organizations after dinner. Like the number 3 was given, not earned. You push aside claws, aside ribbons that cut sharper that steel, aside tails and wings and teeth and when the setup is perfect, you smile-half secret, half serene-and brush aside her blade as she launches herself forward.

She’s a monster in this time, strong jaw, strong eyes, strong legs and arms and you think briefly of _she must be really insecure_ and _having all that muscle is useless_ and **_brute strength like always, just like a gorilla_** , before she’s cleaved the Being from head to groin. She stands in the shower of blood as the halves fall and grins back at you, so cocky, so brash, so sure of herself.

You brush gore from her cheek and expect hair to slide like silk over your knuckles, expect a soft not-there smile and _that’s why I’m number three!_ and you think **_when did I stop seeing you as you?_**

* * *

 

When you sink your blades into the body of a warrior who cut you down without cutting you, you see a grave of snow and ice and rock, too wide for one but too narrow to be separate. You see lovers standing in a cave, hands clasped, the younger blushing shyly, the taller glaring defiantly. You see the woman beneath your blade and you think _leader_ you think _friend_ you think **_sister_** and suddenly you’re crying with Rachel’s arms around you, horrified by the blood staining your hands.

That day, that day changes you. Or maybe you were always changed, and that day was what it took for you to see how different you were.

Somewhere foggy, deep in the recesses of your memory, you remember a little girl who used her words to bring laughter instead of scorn, who could never sit still, and her friend who smiled softly and dissuaded some of the more ridiculous schemes they came up with.

Somewhere, you recognize the soft girl as Rachel, the laughing girl as yourself, and you wonder when you became each other. You remember clashing blades and **_stormwind_** and _muscular_ and **_Let’s settle who’s number three right now!_** and wonder when _best friend_ became _inseparable_ became _one_.

You’re both there at the final battle, watching a small girl that you ache to protect turn into a beautiful woman that you burn to avoid and then back to the not-child warrior, the strongest- ** _she’s not fit for battle, it’s a miracle she’s survived up to now!_** -destroy a creature so beyond your comprehension that you feel younger, feel older, feel the pain of two bolts imbed themselves in your chest as you watch Rachel-no Deneve-no, _Sophia_ fall.

You watch as a tiny woman with curly hair and large eyes steps into the girls chest, watch as a tall warrior with stern features wrap them both in her arms as if she would rather die than let them leave. You watch as a meek woman and a gentle woman and Miria-sister-Miria crowd around with laughter and soft hands running over hair and shoulders and think _this is what family is like_ but later.

Later you sit in the tavern with a tankard in your hand and Rachel draped over your back breathing sloppy kisses in your ear and you watch as they set two full mugs aside at their table in front of two empty chairs.

You watch as they laugh but somehow you think it’s quieter than it should be, softer, their smiles dimmer.

You think that somehow, seven years later, they're still mourning you.

* * *

 

A year later you stand, blade at your back, armor long gone, a fur-lined cloak wrapped around your shoulders and Rachel’s hand in yours, snow turning your silver hair white.

You see a ruined city, the shadows of Pieta.

You see a horde of Beings, long since gone, a circle of death with twenty-five bright lights in the center that fade as they fall until _eleven, ten_ , there’s only nine left.

You see a young girl-Clare, you remember now-pass from building to building in a burst of shattered stone and blinding speed until her… her… Leaders? Lovers? pull her from the depths of her mind in time for them to be skewered one-two-three and fall in a heap. You see Miria-sister-Miria blur into shadows until something strikes flesh instead of phantoms, see Tabitha cry out as she falls under a pile of stone and bodies and Uma ripped almost in half and Cynthia struck from behind as she runs to help.

You see a woman with long limbs and a longer smile, literally laughing in the face of death as she stretches and stretches and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s to tangle the creatures in her arms.

You see a woman with slender arms and focused eyes and a blade clutched in each hand as she falls from the sky to cleave heads from bodies and armor from soft fleshy bits beneath, and you watch as they stand back to back, two candles flickering in the center of a blizzard.

A voice whispers, back of your mind, a memory or a dream or an echo of a world you lived in before you were you, **_man, what a bunch of garbage!_ **

Chagrin, a chuckle, the feeling of a gentle blow to the back of your head as the slender woman throws her head back, knocking her skull against the other. _Why do you always have to be such a troublemaker?_

**_Ah, you know you love me._ **

_There’s no accounting for taste._

**_...Hey, Deneve? Can I ask you something?_ **

_Kind of busy here Helen!_

Dimly you feel Rachel pull you along, through crumpled walls and shattered roads and snow as high as your knees, as sure in this strange place as she is in the woods or your room in the former Organization.

The gangly one, the long-limbed girl, the one your heart calls Helen, smiles wide as the Beings close in, and you almost don’t notice how her hands shake. _**You know I love you, right?**_

_Yes you dummy_. There’s a sob in the voice, choked back like she-like _Deneve_ -is trying so so hard to be strong but can’t quite manage it.

**_Good. I’ll find you again, after._ **

_In this life, or the next?_

**_As long as you promise to wait for me._ **

You walk through a forest of swords, stepping between graves, weaving through markers, quietly counting _thirteen, fourteen, fifteen_ until she pulls you to a stop in front of a too-wide grave with crossed blades at the head, arm around your waist as Rachel whispers quietly, mournfully, _don’t keep me waiting long, stupid_.

_**I won’t.** _


End file.
